


A Dress Wearing A Face In The Doorway

by averita



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: Gen, Non-explicit references to canon mind control and abuse, spoilers for part two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-09
Updated: 2019-04-09
Packaged: 2020-01-07 14:42:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18412733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/averita/pseuds/averita
Summary: Zelda listens, head tilted with placid interest, and she wonders how she would react if she were able. For just a moment she’s grateful that someone else is pulling her strings; without them, she thinks she’d collapse.





	A Dress Wearing A Face In The Doorway

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Whatever You Want" by Vienna Teng (which is an EXCELLENT song for season two Zelda!)
> 
> Thank you to [MadamLilith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadamLilith/pseuds/MadamLilith) for inspiration and insight. Check out her Madam Spellman fic if you haven't already!
> 
> I’ve never written for this fandom so feedback would be greatly appreciated.

He does it while she’s sleeping.

She wakes five days after her wedding, aching and exhausted, to a dress laid across the foot of her bed and her husband watching with hard dark eyes.

She’s known Faustus most of her life, knew better than almost anyone his twisted and distorted pieces; the way they’d changed over the years until the boy he’d once been was as much a stranger to her as her own faith was becoming. They’d grown, warped him into a creature of ego and lust - a creature, she’d thought, that would be easily swayed with careful words and a deft hand. Distasteful, disturbing, but manageable - an acceptable means to a necessary end. 

All of those savage pieces had swelled and burst before her eyes on her wedding day. He’d turned into a new monster entirely, and whatever illusion of control she had shattered the moment he took a knife to her nephew. She’d accepted his proposal for power; she married him - alone in his office with dread curdling in her gut - for survival, and her own mattered far less than her family’s. 

She’d played the part perfectly as the days of their honeymoon stretched into longer nights. Dutiful, gentle, the picture of a new bride, but her careful wheedling had devolved into outright begging as word came of an execution date, witchhunters, and the whisper of strange miracles in Greendale. 

“Faustus,” she’d pleaded the night before, voice raw and ragged, “Faustus, they are my _family_ ,” and his eyes flashed with rage that chilled her to her core.

“I am the only family that matters to you now,” he’d spat. “You will do well to remember that, _wife_.”

Zelda remembered, then, Sabrina’s Dark Baptism: her mingled panic and defiance, the tremor in her voice as she’d whispered “That’s not what you said.” _Father Blackwood lied_ , she’d insisted later, and Zelda had scoffed, because it hardly seemed to matter in the grand scheme of it. But Sabrina had fled, had chosen freedom over power, and Zelda’s choice hadn’t been a choice at all when she signed her name away.

Staring at her husband with Sabrina’s fury and Ambrose’s screams ringing in her ears, Zelda had realized with an icy terror that in trying to save her family, she might have doomed them all.

She wonders, when she dresses the next day to the sweet tinkling tune of a music box, what he saw in that moment that gave her away.

***

When her words are lost and her body a puppet on strings, when there is nothing left of her but her mind, Zelda prays.

 _Give me strength_ , she begs, and smiles.  
_Give me freedom_ , she pleads, and pours a cup of tea.  
_Give me BACK_ , she screams, and spreads her legs.

The Dark Lord doesn’t answer her. Truly, she didn’t expect him to.

And so she dances and tilts her head and turns her prayers to Lilith: the first woman, the first _witch_ , the wife who took her own freedom when her husband denied it to her. _Lilith_ , she prays, _dear Lilith, lend me your power, lend me the fire to break these chains._

She waits. 

***

Sabrina died while Zelda was on her honeymoon. 

Pierced with arrows, Prudence recounts breathlessly when they return. She died, then rose from the dead and into the air. She slaughtered angels and bestowed life. 

Zelda listens, head tilted with placid interest, and she wonders how she would react if she were able. For just a moment she’s grateful that someone else is pulling her strings; without them, she thinks she’d collapse.

***

“Satan in hell, what am I wearing?”

***

“There, now,” Hilda soothes, shutting their bedroom door behind her and rushing forward to help Zelda sit. “That’s better, isn’t it?”

“Hilda,” Zelda manages, and she notices vaguely that she’s trembling. “Hilda, Sabrina -”

Hilda kneels next to her, taking her sister’s shaking hand between both of hers. “She’s just downstairs,” she says. “She’s just fine, Zelds, but let’s take a minute, hm? Get ourselves together?”

Zelda sucks in a wet breath and nods, pressing the heel of her hand to her eye where the pressure is building to something unbearable.

Her sister - her blessed sister, whom Zelda has never been more grateful to than now - had whisked her away the moment the curse had lifted, her hand on Zelda’s back less comfort than the only thing keeping her upright as the world reoriented and threatened to buckle beneath her. 

“You’re all right, now,” Hilda murmurs, one hand now rubbing circles over the delicate silk of the dress that still feels like a cage as Zelda shudders and tries not to break. “Let it out, then, you’re safe now.”

But she can’t, Zelda knows. She can’t break yet. Because when she does - when the scream that’s been building in her throat is finally set free - it will be anything but delicate. She will shatter like shrapnel, make wastelands of anyone in her wake, and will have to rebuild herself piece by piece, prayer by prayer, if there’s even anyone left to pray to.

No. Not yet. She still has a part to play.

She clings to Hilda’s hand and _breathes_. 

***

Lilith is a small woman with tired eyes and a familiar story: giving, and giving, and getting nothing in return. 

“I’ve spent lifetimes planning a thousand steps ahead,” she tells Zelda, quirking her lips up in a sad, dry smile. “All in his service. A thousand steps, and here I am right back where I started.”

Around them, her family is preparing. Ambrose hefts the weight of his spike; Hilda almost drops her dagger as she twists it in nervous hands. Sabrina has vanished up to her room, and after these last few days, even that short distance cuts Zelda sharper than any blade in the room could. 

Zelda stares at Lilith, inches from her on the sofa. She’s settled into it like she owns it, one arm resting along the top and her legs crossed, but there’s tension in every marble line of her body and her lashes are wet with blinking. 

If Zelda wanted to, she could reach out and touch her. See if there’s fire under her skin, or just soft flesh. 

She clenches her fists until blood pools beneath her nails. “I _prayed_ to you,” she manages, and crosses the room to Hilda before Lilith can respond. 

***

They save 54 people, in the end.

Her school, her coven, her religion - Zelda’s entire life, dead and gone but for those crumpled in her living room, and she herself slid a blade into the Dark Lord’s back. 

She did it for for Sabrina - Sabrina, who is _hers_ in every way that counts, and let Heaven and Hell alike defy anyone who says otherwise. She did it for Edward and Diana, who suffered horrors she’s only now beginning to understand. She did it for Ambrose and Hilda, for Leticia and Prudence; for Lilith, watching from behind the trees with wild hair and wilder hope. 

She did it for herself, because she can’t get back all that she’s lost but she’ll be _damned_ if he takes any more from her.

She’d have stabbed him a thousand times if she’d been able.

***

Sabrina is a vision in gold, nearly unrecognizable. She’s gone from god to mortal to queen - from Spellman to Morningstar and back again - in less than a week, and all of those roles have left their marks on her. She holds her head high as she leads them through the mines, but her jaw is set in a way that Zelda knows all too well from her own mirror. 

“She’s strong,” Lilith says wistfully, just ahead of Zelda. “She’ll be all right.”

Zelda nods stiffly but says nothing. 

Lilith hesitates - uncharacteristically, Zelda thinks, but she’s still imagining the deity she worshiped and perhaps that’s not fair. She’s seen the true face of the Dark Lord now. If she’d seen it sooner, had worshiped less blindly, she might have saved them all some grief. Here, at least, is someone Zelda can understand - someone who knows the worth of that sort of devotion. Someone who knows the price. 

But for all that Lilith has bled and fought and earned her prize, it came at Sabrina’s expense, and Zelda can’t quite look past that.

Lilith pauses, slows so that they’re walking side by side. “I heard you, you know,” she says. “And I’m sorry.” 

Zelda continues to stare straight ahead, not taking her eyes off her niece as they get closer to the gates; already she can see Sabrina’s shoulders starting to slump, the weight of the crown she still wears bending her neck. Behind them, Harvey carries Nick’s limp body, and his heavy footsteps echo like drums. 

Just as the gates come into view she stops, a sudden halt that turns into even more sudden movement as she grabs Lilith’s hand and pulls her the few steps into the shadows. Mary Wardwell’s startled eyes glow with something new and bright as Zelda grasps her chin in her free hand and pulls her forward, face to face. Firelight flickers across Lilith’s, grief and shame written into every shifting feature.

“Do better,” Zelda says, voice thick around the lump in her throat. “ _Be_ better.”

Harvey has come to a stop; the mines are nearly silent now, and Lilith is still and sharp against her. They stare at each other for a long moment before she steps back and straightens. 

Without breaking Zelda’s gaze, she nods.

***

Sabrina weeps, and Zelda holds her. If it weren’t for Hilda, she doesn’t know if they’d have had the strength to get up again. 

Back at the mortuary Ambrose packs, Hilda tends to the survivors, and Sabrina stares into the fireplace. 

Zelda drinks a cup of foxglove tea and goes to sleep. She doesn’t pray. 

***

Sabrina finds her in the desecrated church, where the air is still thick with blood magic. 

“What are we going to do with it?” she asks, sliding into the pew next to Zelda. Zelda takes her hand but doesn’t meet her gaze.

“Burn it,” she says hoarsely, staring at the spot where she and Faustus married just a few weeks ago. 

Sabrina nods thoughtfully. “This could be a nice place for a garden,” she muses. From the corner of her eye, Zelda can see a slight smile tugging at her lips.

Zelda squeezes her hand and wills her tears away. “Perhaps,” she agrees. “Some day.” With so few of them left and divisions already forming among those that are, it will take some time. Still, she pictures the dark church giving way to open skies and crisp air, the ground coming to life beneath Hilda’s gentle touch and trees laden with fruit for anyone to pick. The idea takes root in her chest, cracks open and fills her with warmth. 

“Was it hard, Auntie?” Sabrina asks, and _this_ , Zelda thinks, is why she came, the question that’s been in her eyes and on the tip of her tongue since the masks came off and the gates closed. “To turn against him?”

There are scorch marks on the floor near the altar where angels stood and were struck down; blood still marks the ground where Melvin and Elspeth died, forms sick winglike stains where Sabrina fell. Every time Zelda blinks she pictures her lying there. 

She shakes her head, squeezing her eyes tight and Sabrina tighter, and the cry that’s been living inside her for weeks wrenches itself free at last.


End file.
